Patterns
by DSieya
Summary: Now, at the end it of it all, three years into—into everything, Penny thinks she has it figured out, this pattern she has with Leonard. oneshot, leonard/penny, spoilers up to 3.21, rated for mentions of sex.


**Written in response to 3.21 taping spoilers. DO NOT READ if you don't want to be spoiled up until 3.21. No S/P romantic overtones, just a look at L/P over the years and the patterns that it brought about.**

* * *

Penny's good at sensing patterns. She's also pretty damn good at ignoring them.

With Kurt, it was four years of him cheating, her taking him back, it getting good again, it getting bad again, and bam the cycle restarts. And she's pretty embarrassed that it took her four years to say _"screw this shit"_ and actually leave. There's something to be said for being comfortable in a relationship, or at least used to whatever guy's crap and not willing to admit that it just. isn't. working, that makes her unwilling to leave.

Then she hit her stride in taking-home-meatheads, let's-just-fuck-for-thirty-six-hours, before that got old as well.

(The thing is, she definitely sees these patterns as they emerge, but she's too damn stubborn to impose a self-intervention that gets that shit to stop.)

With Leonard, oh god, with Leonard it was the worst. It was like a pattern as part of a pattern overlapping another pattern. And then it all ended. Predictably. Penny saw it coming, even though she resisted her hardest, because Leonard was—well, she doesn't know. Different.

Now, at the end it of it all, three years into—into everything, Penny thinks she has it figured out, this pattern she has with Leonard.

Meet Leonard. _"Aw, he's sweet." _Kiss Leonard on a drunken impulse. Spend the next few days cringing at that stupid decision. A hot girl arrives (Missy), Leonard drops Penny like a hot potato and ignores her until the new hot girl leaves. Get pissed. Be jealous, which she recognizes as more of a product of her own vanity than any actual desire for Leonard. Date another guy. Doesn't end well with that other guy. It's a catastrophe. Leonard is there. He's acting sweet. The box opens, the cat's alive, well, sort of, it's not _dead_, in any case. Go out with him. Feel insecure. Doesn't end well, break it off.

Reset with Leonard. _"Aw, he's still sweet."_ Make out with Leonard on a drunken impulse. New pattern emerges: Leonard's mommy issues, which Leonard brings up at _the worst time_. Spend the next few days cringing at that stupid decision (and at the implications of that decision, hello, she read Oedipus in high school like everyone else, and doesn't remember much of it except that Oedipus means "club foot" (for some reason that sticks with her, she doesn't know why, it's a little gross anyway) and that he married his mother). A hot girl arrives (Alicia), Leonard drops Penny like a hot potato, snaps at her, and ignores her until the new hot girl hops in bed with a casting director. Get pissed. Feel insecure, be jealous, which she recognizes as more of a product of that bitch taking all of her friends than out of any actual possessiveness of _just Leonard_.

Date another nerd. Doesn't end well with that other nerd, because she's drunk off her ass and making out with him, and her mind definitely recognizes _that_ pattern, that hey-I'm-so-fucking-smashed-and-making-out-with-the-type-of-guy-I-don't-usually-make-out-with pattern, which is why when that other guy says, "_Penny,"_ she says, _"Leonard"_ because hey, that's what she's used to.

New pattern emerges: the rationalizing. Maybe, maybe, _maybe this all means something. He definitely wants me. I want him when I'm drunk. We're good friends. This can lead to something. _There's a catastrophe: Leonard is going away and she hasn't made her decision. Leonard is there. He's acting sweet. He leaves.

Maybe, maybe, _maybe_, she rationalizes that summer, _maybe the fact that he is so totally different—maybe that's exactly what I need. Hell, I'll give it the old college try. (Or the old community college try,)_ says a voice in the back of her head, and Penny kicks the sofa in response.

Leonard's back. _"Aw, he's sweet."_ She jumps him like he's a bronco, already resolved that she's gonna do this, that Leonard may be _the one _or whatever, and that she'd always wonder if she never tried. New pattern emerges, a pattern that ambles along with the rationalizing: the ignoring. Ignore that Sheldon's brokenness is Leonard's fault. Ignore that he shoots off an apology as he tries to climb up her skirt. Ignore that getting with her is more important than his best friend, at all. Actually, no—don't ignore that; rationalize that: _he just wants her _that_ much_. Sex is bad, get drunk on impulse to make it good. Spend the next few days cringing at that stupid decision.

Then, instead of moving on: ignore it. Jump back into bed, and it's not bad anymore, it's _okay_, and that's a win in her book. Rationalize that this is growth, they're developing and learning each other, and this means that dating him would follow the same pattern as _doing_ him. New pattern emerges: wake up, sit with Leonard, kiss him, make out with him, figure out a way to piss Sheldon off, eat with the guys, go to bed, cuddle and/or have sex. Receive little except a few half-hearted orgasms. Be the hot girlfriend to the nerd. Feel insecure, see insecurity. Ignore it. Until—

—new pattern emerges: the fighting. She does something, Leonard hates it, one of them gives in and smacks a convenient band-aid on top of it all. Old boyfriends, psychics, Leonard gets mean and it shocks her, (except not really, she still remembers Sheldon curled up in the fetal position on his bed), and Penny rationalizes it as _just a fight_ and ignores it. Mommy issues pop up again, _"One of us should be insulted,"_ and Penny kinda realizes even in her half-drunken state that that's _her_, _she _should be insulted, because she's pretty sure that if she were more like Leonard's own mother he would have crowed it to the ends of the earth.

New pattern emerges: errant thoughts that it's about the sex for Leonard, the validation, the affection from a woman, any woman. Ignore that, don't even try to rationalize it.

New pattern emerges: passive-aggressiveness to get on his nerves, talk about _why_ she's dating Leonard while he's sitting next to her, pretend she doesn't know who the X-Men are, pretend like she doesn't know that all the Swiss items on the plate means it has something to do with Switzerland, slyly insinuate that she needs a new boyfriend, slyly insinuate that she's faking a lot more than he'd like her to, because they're both getting lazy and she's at the point where she just wants him to finish and roll over. And then, when this passive-aggressiveness is getting on her _own_ nerves, when she's a little horrified at what she's turned into, drop next to him, cuddle into him, and look away when Sheldon wonders what they _talk_ about after sex, because they really _don't_ and that's embarrassing.

Ignore the fact that Leonard broke a promise to Sheldon in order to have sex with her in Switzerland (rationalize it with her own greed that, hey, he's actually making some sort of effort to break out of the rut they shouldn't _be_ in since they've only been dating a few months), roll her eyes when Leonard's more preoccupied with a stupid signature than with the fact his roommate landed himself in jail, ignore the fact that he _consistently _embarrasses her when they're out together, and then, then, then when Leonard tells her he loves her—

—_then_ is when she freaks out.

Because she doesn't see it. She _really_ doesn't see it. And she definitely doesn't feel it. No, she's not scared to say it back; Penny doesn't get scared of stupid shit like that, especially when a guy says it first. She's scared because he's somehow a lot more involved in this relationship than she is, _somehow_, and his other relationships must have been really bad for _this_ one to be the gold standard for him or whatever, with her feeling boring and not herself and watching him be snide and smug and obnoxious, especially when he's insecure (which is like _all the time_), and then she seizes this as an out.

And even though she's sleeping alone at night now, and all those other stupid little habits and cycles they got themselves into are now broken and discarded (she's done ignoring, she's done rationalizing, she's done fighting, she's done with the passive-aggressiveness, she's donedonedone), the same old pattern keeps rolling along.

A hot girl arrives (Dr. Plimpton), Leonard forgets Penny like a rotten potato since another pair of legs is opening up to him. Get pissed. Be jealous, which she recognizes is more of a product of the fact that for a guy who got mad at her for not saying _"I love you"_ back, he sure has moved on pretty quickly with seemingly very little regrets. And it leads her to question, to question whether he _actually_ was more invested in the relationship than she was, because she remembered thinking that _before_, but comparing how the two of them are acting _now_, that inkling comes back. That inkling that niggles at her that he was more invested in steadily incoming sex than in her as a person, because once he gets a blonde again he's all the sudden back to being smug-happy-Leonard, and Penny sure is confusing herself with all this roundabout thinking but at the same time it makes sense, and—

—and it is _at this moment_, after his proclamation that he fucked Plimpton for the sole reason that the woman _let_ him, as if that's his only standard (which it seems to be), it is _at this moment_ that everything rollstogether like a lumpy sleeping bag. Penny looks at Leonard, carefully arranges a sardonic smile, begins to walk up the stairs again, and informs him cheerfully, "Yeah. Well, that wraps _this_ up nicely, huh?"—

—and it is at this moment that the pattern ends.


End file.
